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The Paper Dragon

By

Henny Sender

Updated July 12, 2001 12:01 a.m. ET

There is nothing subtle about Gordon G. Chang's thesis in "The Coming Collapse of China" (Random House, 320 pages, $27.95).

Mr. Chang, most recently counsel for Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in Shanghai, believes China is a paper dragon, a country run by a Communist Party that has lost its meaning for the majority of the Chinese people. Unemployed urban workers, disaffected villagers in the countryside, separatists in the western regions, the sad practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual movement,...